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I knew I had to read this book when I saw that it was about a soccer player. It’s been a long time since I’ve participated in a book tour or requested an Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) of a book due to real life getting in the way of reading and reviewing as much as I would like to. However, the premise of this book was too cute to pass up so with pictures of hot soccer players kicking goals in my head (Ole, ole ole!) I put my hand up to do a review.

The words on the cover of the book pretty much explain the plot:

The story is about Bethany, a shy Biology major, and Jensen, a star soccer player. They have a one night stand and the rest of the book is about Bethany being pursued very ardently by Jensen. I’m not a huge reader of New Adult books but I found myself liking this book in spite of its genre.

I liked the relationship between Bethany and her sister Taylor, and how the whole big sister/little sister dynamic was different from usual in that Taylor was the older sister but was actively encouraging her little sis to get into more trouble. I liked that Bethany was shown to still take her studies seriously- there was no throwing it all away for love. Without giving too much away, I like how Jensen wooed Bethany so well. There were more than a few very sweet moments/grand gestures in the book that made me smile.

There was a stark contrast between the sweetness of the way Jensen pursued Bethany (and really pursued is the word, the boy worked hard for it) and how racy the language got in the sex scenes. On the spice-o-meter I’d put this book just over the 50% line where the orange starts turning into red.

If there was one thing I do wish is that there was a little more character development for Jensen, I would have liked to see more of his soccer playing and his back story. That said, this read like a long novella so the length of the story didn’t lend itself to much of a backstory for either character. What you DO come away with though is that Jensen is a really good guy, not afraid to go after what he wants and work hard for it.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable book that was easy to read, was well edited and BONUS had an epilogue which showed their happily ever after. It wasn’t perfect, but the story was so cute and the characters so likeable I devoured the book in one sitting on a Sunday night. This is my first book by Aria Cole but she caught my attention with this book and I will definitely be looking out for her next one. B-